I finished last week’s challenge at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Henry IV successfully passed his throne to his son and grandson – it says something about the change in society that when Henry VI became king that he was a baby.

The relationship between king and barons had changed but it remained true that a king or his representatives needed to be victorious in battle and be able to control the various extended Plantagenet family members who held political power. Henry VI was unable to do this and the claims of the house of York became of increasing importance resulting eventually in the Cousins War which Sir Walter Scott renamed The Wars of the Roses.